The processing power, memory capacity, network connectivity and bandwidth, available disk space, and other resources available to processing systems have increased exponentially in the last two decades. Computing resources have evolved to the point where a single physical server may host many instances of virtual machines and virtualized functions. These advances had led to the extensive provisioning of a wide spectrum of functionality for many types of entities into specific pockets of concentrated processing resources that may be located virtually anywhere, that is, relocated into a cloud of processing resources handling many different clients, hosted by many different service providers, in many different geographic locations. Improvements in cloud system architectures, including data processing pipelines, will drive the further development and implementation of functionality into the cloud.